Hogsback's eco shrine — a voice for the Earth

There is some­thing of the sac­red in Hogsback in the Eastern Cape. Perhaps it is the eth­er­eal prox­im­ity of dense, indi­gen­ous forests that hint at faery folk, or its remote­ness that make it so. But few people leave here without some ele­ment of repar­a­tion, even if it is simply their faith in the beauty of nature that is restored.

The approach to the eco shrine, which the artist Diana Graham calls the 'Voice of the Earth Eco shrine', does much to rein­force this impres­sion. It is a tun­nel formed by lean, leafy Hazelnut trees that cre­ate a vor­tex through which one moves from one time into another. Or so it seems ...

At the end of the tun­nel is Diana Graham's home, and in her garden on the edge of the Tyume Valley with the three Hogsback Mountains as a back­drop, and the Madonna and Child Falls vis­ible through the eye of a carved cement teardrop, lies the cir­cu­lar eco shrine, Diana's trib­ute to the evol­u­tion­ary bonds that con­nect Earth to all other liv­ing creatures, and rep­res­ent­at­ive of the sac­red­ness of our Earth.

In 1998 Diana was awar­ded the Green Dove award from America for the shrine. It hon­ours out­stand­ing pro­jects com­mu­nic­at­ing the con­nec­tion between eco­logy, psy­cho­logy, and spir­itu­al­ity, and the quietly spoken, red-haired woman who stood before us spoke simply and yet with an incred­ible pas­sion of the loss of humanity's humil­ity in the face of nature.

It isn't the only award that graces Diana's stu­dio. There is also the Mail and Guardian Green Trust Award, an Eastern Cape Premier's Award and let­ters hon­our­ing the shrine from vari­ous garden­ing groups. It is clear that oth­ers, like me, find the eco shrine an unfor­get­table experience.

Diana dons a hat when out in the sun. She meets every vis­itor to her eco shrine per­son­ally, and whilst she shows you around she explains her inspir­a­tion behind each of her paint­ings and mosa­ics. The eco shrine was built in 1995, Diana's homage to the Earth, which, whilst it links to no par­tic­u­lar reli­gion, has a very strong spir­itual dimension.

Since then, it is one of the major tour­ist attrac­tions of the town, and attracts people from all cul­tures and walks of life for work­shops, per­form­ances, read­ings and even wed­ding ceremonies.

It turns out that the teardrop is one of the shrine win­dows that allow one to focus on a favour­ite part of the land­scape. The cement and mosaic enclos­ure that houses Diana's paint­ings and sculp­tures, is part of a vis­ion Diana init­ally wanted to cre­ate in the nearby forests. After pur­su­ing this for a while, and soon find­ing that red tape and bur­eau­cracy would stand in her way, she opted instead for the bot­tom of her garden.

She eli­cited the help of Dagamnyama Wara, a local brick­layer from the Tyume val­ley, who helped her build the low walled enclos­ure with large upright struc­tures in which Diana's paint­ings are dis­played and some­times rotated. In the centre stands a large fish pond and a fountain.

The effect is at once beau­ti­ful and thought pro­vok­ing. The com­bin­a­tion of oil paint­ings, sculp­tural uprights, mosa­ics, and the sur­round­ing moun­tains, forests and water­falls does exactly as inten­ded and demon­strates the essen­tial inter­ac­tion between nature and man.

Diana has been care­ful too. The paint­ings out in the ele­ments face the side that receives the least sun, whilst it is the mosa­ics, rep­res­ent­ing ancient images of San artists and pho­to­graphs of the uni­verse from the Hubble space tele­scope (a space tele­scope car­ried into orbit in 1990 and a vital research tool), that face the wrath of the sun.

Diana fre­quently men­tions James Lovelock, author and ori­gin­ator of the Gaia the­ory, and is inspired by his words and the evol­u­tion of life on Earth. She speaks about her­self as a Deep Ecologist, a recent form of eco­lo­gical philo­sophy that con­siders human­kind as an integ­ral part of its envir­on­ment with a core prin­ciple that claims the equal right of the liv­ing envir­on­ment to live and flourish.

We sit awhile and drink in the atmosphere.

To one side of the house is Diana Graham's stu­dio. A strong smell of tur­pen­tine greets me as I gingerly cross the threshold, not want­ing to dis­turb her at her work, des­pite her invit­a­tion to join her there. She enjoys hav­ing vis­it­ors though and soon we are in con­ver­sa­tion about vari­ous ele­ments of the shrine and her work, eco­logy and the universe.

Spread out on tables are prints of her paint­ings, whilst the walls are graced with oil paint­ings for sale. I quickly acquire a num­ber of cards and a fair sized print to frame for my walls. In this way, I can carry a little some­thing of the eco shrine home with me. A memory to remind me of the moments we spent here.

Photographs: Click the thumb­nails to view the enlarged pho­tos as a sequence.

Contact Information:
Telephone: +27 (0)45 962‑1136
Opening hours: Weather per­mit­ting the Eco-Shrine is open every Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, Public and school hol­i­days. Open every day in season.

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